walking and heeling

Question
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well with your advice and a few minutes practice, the heeling was no problem! thanks.  Now I was wondering something else.  He loves to play with his toys and gets them strewn all over the house.  Is is actually possible to train the dog to put their toys away in a certain location?
If so, it necessary to have one of those clicker devices to do something like that?
kandace

Answer
You can train a dog to do just about anything you wish with patience and consistent rewarding of positive behavior.
Clicker training is just one of many methods of training that people find useful, but you can use whatever method you feel most comfortable with.

Teaching a dog to put its toys (or any other item) away takes several steps and time for the dog to learn each part of the process until it is able to successfully complete this behavior. This is essentially one of the behaviors taught to service dogs for the disabled.

Start by teaching the dog to fetch and retrieve a toy. The next step is teach the dog to immediately give up the toy upon returning it without attempting to play tug or keep possession of the object. Practice a command word such as "Drop It" or "Place". You can teach the dog to releaase without a struggle by offering him a reward in it's place. Trade the toy for a treat or a quick praise.

The next step would be to teach the dog to release the toy diretly into your hand and finally, into the basket.

Keep in mind while training that each step must be successfully completed and learned before moving on to the next step. It can take a period of time for complete success. This behavior is a commanded one. Dogs don't have a "cleanliness conscious" and so they have no desire to pick up after themselves on their own.

Dogs can be very much like human toddlers. They need constant supervision, they eat anything that lands on the floor and they occasionally spill! Patience, consistent training and lots of rewards will help you train your dog for just about any behavior you wish.